


The Perks of Being A Star (or at least named after one)

by aejaycee



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Marauders' Era, Sexual Content, Underage Drinking, Unresolved Romantic Tension, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-04-19 22:32:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4763498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aejaycee/pseuds/aejaycee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius Black, the largest-selling solo act signed to Black Records, is on an international tour to promote his newest album. The tabloids say his hair is insured for $10,000. The tabloids say his engagement to now-grown child star Alecto Carrow is a publicity stunt. The tabloids say he needs to get his act together and locate some of that authenticity people pay so much to see. Remus Lupin, new tour photographer, just says he's a bit of a sellout. A sellout with nice eyes, sure, but that's neither here nor there. Marauders Band AU. Wolfstar AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

“There really ought to be some sort of etiquette about this,” Sirius muttered as he moved through the crows, hands pushed low into his jacket pockets.  
  
He was scowling, but he knows somewhere in the back recesses of his mind that was his own fault for being late. He had a security team; there was no written law that he should have had to be jostled around now by a sea of maintenance and miscellaneous workers as he tried to make his way backstage. He could hardly see the stage at the moment, let alone the back of it, as sound technicians tripped over their own wires and their equivalents in the lighting booth attempted to cast a glow that ‘looked like magic’, or whatever it was they were always going on about. There were reasons that Sirius was supposed to stay backstage after the sound check, but at the time a three hour stint of being idle seemed much less tempting than this would: pushing his way through people whose jobs, ironically, were to accommodate him in some way.

Attempting to look casual, even here in the most harried of situations, the dark haired boy pulled out a pocket watch (most people thought it was just for show, never realizing that it was the one and only way he knew how to keep an accurate count of time—it was hardly a secret anymore that his mother had had his cellular phone switched to show everything was an hour ahead, in a desperate bid to keep him in check) and cast a look over the ticking hand. Late, as suspected, he thought to himself, but it brought a quick grin to his features. Late, as expected.  
  
Sirius Black claimed to be a fan of irony, but he didn’t appreciate the instance of it that was happening in the moment. If he hadn’t checked his watch to confirm he was late, he might never had smiled. And if he hadn’t smiled, he would have been free to continue doing the one thing that was bringing him some sense of solace for the moment: remaining invisible in the sea of workers. It wasn’t a rumor that Sirius liked to be the center of attention (in his business, it was one of the most important prerequisites). But between the digitized posters of his face hanging outside the venue and the wardrobe carts rolling by with his name tacked to them, this was his one reprieve from the flashbulbs—

And, there. A literal flashbulb had just gone off, nearly blinding Sirius in his periphery. 

Sirius turned his head to the side sharply, more curious than accusatory, and landed his sights on the light in question: it was a camera, obviously, but not one of the ones he’d seen in his recent memory…or, that being said, his distant memory either. It was an old-fashioned breed (one of those hipster ones, no doubt, all refurbished and made to look old) with an honest-to-God compartment for film on the side and everything. He must have stared for just a moment too long, expression frozen into a shape that was decidedly Not A Smile, because before he knew it the camera was being lowered to reveal the master behind it: a knobbly-looking sandy-haired by (a local, by the looks of the way he was dressed) with patchwork of scars and an expression that was too dumbstruck to be fabricated.  
  
“Save it for the show, yeah?” Sirius asked, in a voice that carried too much of an edge to be genuine; he wasn’t really all that annoyed (he had gotten used to being photographed like a dog living in a house with young children learned to get used to having its tail pulled), but he wouldn’t pretend not to mourn the loss of the one moment he’d had to himself (see also: to be himself?) all day.  
  
“Sorry,” came the reply, and the voice from the photographer was much higher than Sirius would have expected—higher, but with a shocking sturdiness to it (for the boy didn’t look all that sturdy at all, rather like the next gust of wind could take him and his camera both out to sea). Higher, and also far less apologetic than the average; he didn’t seem frightened by the correction so much as he seemed used to tacking ‘sorry’ onto the beginning of his sentences. Fleetingly, Sirius wondered if he wasn’t the only one used to having his metaphorical tail pulled. “First day, and somebody wasn’t around long enough for test shots.”

Normally quick on the draw when it came to being defense, Sirius just let out a derisive snort. “Sounds like an arse.”

“A pattern, I’m coming to find.”

So he was quick on his feet as well, whoever this new photographer was, with his old (the more Sirius looked at it, the less refurbished it looked) camera slung around his neck and his pants that were –Sirius had already spent about thirty percent of his life in wardrobe fittings, he couldn’t be faulted for looking—a bit too tight and also a bit short (Was that in style now? Sirius could no longer tell trend from Old Clothing and the concept worried him a bit). He still didn’t look it, but the wit was at least something new for Sirius, who had been woken up with the statement that a breakfast he had not ordered had been delivered and that he had twenty minutes to get out of bed if he wished to remain on schedule. He did not, by the way, wish to remain on schedule but he supposed they ‘asked’ him that around the same time they ‘asked’ him what he’d want for breakfast.

Sirius had his mouth halfway open to respond (a smirk tugging up at the corners of his lips, a rare sign of him actually beginning to engage), but another voice caught his attention—his whole attention, and the attention of his body as well, because several nerves pricked up in irritation on the back of his neck. His manager was standing squarely in the center of the stage, right at the mouth of the runway as if it had been set and dressed specifically for her. She wasn’t looking quite up to the task of superstar (her hair was pulled back so tightly that it was pulling her entire forehead and eyebrows with it), but even through her clenched jaw he could see that she was trying not to mince words.

“Are you warmed up?” Walburga repeated, her tone grating (it would seem) across everyone in the room, because the place ground to a halt as every eye in the room now turned to rest on him, as If they’d all just noticed that the name they kept writing and repeating and reading could be applied to a living, breathing object in their midst. She was issuing him a challenge, Sirius knew; how could he not? She was the one he’d learned it from.

Without answering, Sirius silently reached for the bottom zipper of his leather jacket and slid it onto the track. His answer was given in the form of him sliding it all the way up to the neck, closing the material around him and smiling blithely. “All toasty,” he confirmed, and the two of them held stony eye contact over the heads of the sixty-or-so people between them.  
  
She wasn’t satisfied (that much was clear enough), but her nostrils flared slightly and Sirius took is as a concession—he would take what he could get, with the show due to start in just a couple of hours. A small snort (disguised; he was clearly used to hiding it) also sounded out from Sirius’s left (he could safely assume it was The New Guy) and he didn’t turn to address it, but it did feel a bit like a vote of confidence in his favor. 

“Just get up here,” Walburga said, in a calm and controlled voice that was every bit as frightening (to those who didn’t know her like Sirius did) as if she’d just tossed the towel in and snapped. With that, she turned on her heel and walked away, back past a guitar player warming up and a set builder that wasn’t thrilled to accommodate her path for the second time in a short span of minutes.  
  
Once she was gone, Sirius shook the encounter off with a roll of his eyes, but he only had to take one step toward the runway before he realized that It was their first night in this venue: between attempting to stay out of the way of the workers and having no idea what the labyrinth of the backstage looked like…well, he was a bit stuck for the moment, wasn’t he? He was sure his confusion was palpable on his face, but as he turned back to The New Guy, he could see that he was going to be of little help.

“Any idea how to get back there without getting tackled by my own security team?” Sirius asked, slowly unzipping his jacket to let it hang casually around him in a way that wouldn’t give him heatstroke. The sandy-haired photographer only shrugged back at him; Sirius could see that he’d been in the middle of deleting the photo he’d taken of the off-guard performer moments ago. 

“You’d think,” he said after a moment, as if it were a thought he’d come up with on his own just now. “There would be some sort of etiquette about it.”


	2. The First Show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus photographs his first show and makes friends with another member of the crew

The fact that Remus Lupin was a friend of Emma Vanity never ceased to surprise people, for a variety of reasons. The on-the-surface reason, and the one most often referred to by the self-deprecating Remus, was the fact that they came from two very different worlds. She was a decidedly polished person, a member of the upper crust and (to put it delicately) had more money at her disposal than, it would seem, God himself. The real, and perhaps sadder, reason was much simpler: Emma didn’t have many friends. 

She wasn’t unlikable so much as she had a penchant for being harsh without discrimination, including to those she aligned herself with, and unlike the trust fund army of the small Welsh school Remus attended, Emma had her tunnel vision set on creating a future for herself instead of resting on the laurels of her last name. For now, the focus was athletics. She’d been signed at a notable early age to the junior league football team and from there had spun herself a neat web of endorsement deals and publicity engagements that had solidified her name. 

However, such a legacy wasn’t built without a few helping hands; Remus was one such hand and had become so about a year earlier, when she’d requested (to his surprise, not really realizing the reputation he himself had) his photography services for a highlight reel she was putting together as the daunting shadow of University grew closer and such things became necessary for people like Emma who needed everything planned to a T (and, well, had a shot at actually going to and being able to pay for a University). The shoot had taken place at the practice ground for her professional team and the only stadium in a very wide vicinity–– the only grounds suitable for, say, a concert. 

The rest was history. By the time it was announced that Sirius Black would be touring and making at stop at their very own stadium on the way, Emma had long been fed up with Remus’s lack of desire for a direction. Close to the staff from all the time she spent at the venue, she’d more told Remus that he’d be working the concert instead of asking if he’d be interested in it. Remus knew it was all business with her, just like everything else—the girl had pretty bad taste in music (not that he’d say it to her face) but she and him did have one thing in common, which was a general sense of apathy when it came to the overproduced pop hits of the entire Black Records label and the various stars they’d churned out of the factory over the years. 

Logistics aside, that was the story behind how Remus now came to be standing here in the middle of a slowly-filling-up stadium, polishing the lens of his prized camera and pretty sure that he’d just gotten away with majorly sassing the headliner of the evening without much consequence. He would have been more amused by it, surely, if this wasn’t supposed to be a three night engagement and if he (despite being too proud to admit it) was really, really in need of the paycheck that would be coming his way afterwards. 

There wasn’t much time left to think about it; despite the fact that Sirius had completely missed the sound check, the opening act was preparing to set up their equipment and Remus was finding himself more and more in the way of the increasingly frantic crew. He’d made a small mockery of his ‘press pass’ when it was handed to him, never in his life having wished someone would grant him the absolute pleasure of wearing a laminated index card around his neck. However, as fans began to filter into their seats and he was asked to leave nearly a half dozen times by various guards (seriously, who was organizing these events? Whoever it was wasn’t doing a bang up job of it so far), Remus found himself holding it up at all times, fending off the questions before they could come and coming perilously close to forgetting to load the film into the camera. 

In what felt like a matter of mere moments, the opening act (forgettable at best) had exited the stage and the stadium was being plunged into darkness. Remus almost dropped his camera. Honestly, Emma would have killed him if she were here to watch him fumble about. 

The barrage of screams the met his ears left them ringing—he was lucky that feeling nearly deaf was sort of a relief, given the fact that he was facing three hours of a performer he didn’t particularly care for. Despite the fact that Remus was fully expecting to be left unimpressed by the whole affair, it was hard to keep a bored face in light of the opening number. He wanted to chalk it up to the lighting guys he’d hurriedly met earlier, but Remus suspected it had something to do with Sirius himself. 

Gone was the slightly disheveled and running-late boy he’d watched run in late. There was an undeniably larger-than-life quality about Sirius Black as he took the stage: he seemed both too big and too small for this world, catching the light at all the wrong angles (or, probably more accurately, made up himself of only ridiculously good angles). He walked with a purpose and bled charisma—even with thousands of fans in attendance, Sirius seemed to hold each of them in the palm of his hand; spreading eye contact around and making sure to face each part of the audience in turn, it could have been mistaken as a personal concert for any one of them. There was some electric quality about him, some ounce of star power that Remus was shockingly quick to admit was present—it wasn’t just from the Black Records marketing machine. It couldn’t be. 

And the singing wasn’t…bad. Or, possibly more correct: Sirius wasn’t bad. The music was nothing to spit at, as far as Remus was concerned; it was overproduced and largely predictable. The actual, technical aspects of the show, though? Phenomenal. It was hard to get true and raw glimpses of Sirius’s vocals, buried beneath the backbeats and drum-lines and pyrotechnics. 

However, Remus picked up on them at one specific (and he assumed probably important) time: when Sirius deviated from the script. There were songs Remus recognized from the radio, and would have been able to tune out altogether if Sirius had performed them exactly like they were written. There seemed to be a little bit of a genuine rebel buried beneath the carefully crafted reputation of one—Sirius had little problem deciding on the spot to harmonize with the backup vocals instead of following along like he was clearly meant to, making notes higher and sweeter at what was clearly random—and Remus had to admit, it did work for him. There was raw talent there. Talent that was being wasted in this current arena, sure, but talent all the same. 

At one point Sirius stopped the show completely just to smirk around at the crowd and (it seemed) soak in circumstances of him being up there, to let the waves of screams and affection bask over him.

“Sorry,” he’d said into the mic, out of breath and his voice hoarse and well-used and an octave lower than it should have been—and implying that he wasn’t sorry in the slightest. Remus ventured a guess that it was a standard tone for Sirius Black. “Just enjoying the scenery.” 

The crowd ate it up. 

Those were the moments where Remus’s best work was allowed to happen—every time Sirius deviated from what he was so clearly supposed to be doing was every time that Remus got what he thought at the time would be his best shot of the night. Those were the moments when Sirius’s eyes actually twinkled with a glint of mischief that had to be genuine, or smiled in a way that truly reached his whole face. The night went much quicker than Remus thought it would, if he was being honest with himself; he was no stranger to getting lose in his viewfinder and snapping blindly for hours only to feel like it had been minutes. However, there was something more to it; he (as much as he hated to think so) had really been present at the show, no stranger to the insanely charismatic spell Sirius had seemed to cast over the entire stadium. 

Sirius exited the stage with a lack of drama that the over-the-top start to the show definitely hadn’t hinted at. He didn’t give an encore. He never did. 

The lights came up at that was it: Remus was left standing there with his camera and feeling like he’d been cut loose from strings; it was freeing and disconcerting all at the same time. So, with seemingly nothing left to do, he got set to leave—and he would have made it, too, if it weren’t for what happened next. 

“So are you converted now?” came a voice from Remus’s right, and he jumped in his haste to turn around and locate the source. A boy stood there, lanky and tall even if he wasn’t a skyscraper like Remus himself, with jet black hair that stuck up in every possible direction and a pair of square glasses that sat askew on his face. He had some absurd pass hanging around his neck, just like Remus did, but all his said was ‘crew’…something Remus probably should have guessed by the fact that the newcomer was pushing along a large metal rack. 

“Sorry?” Remus asked, confusion evident on his face as he blinked around, as if he should have had an answer to the question, even if he didn’t understand it. 

“Are you converted now?” The boy repeated, and the amused look on his face was evidence enough that he was getting amusement out of Remus’s confusion. “Are you Sirius’s newest, biggest fan?”

“Oh,” Remus said, and he chanced a nervous little laugh as well; he seemed easy enough to talk to, this intrusive crew member (whoever he was) and he decided to play it safe and just give a little shrug. “I don’t know about that. It was a good show, at least.”

“Couldn’t ask for a better first one,” the boy agreed, bringing up a hand to tousle it through his own hair, further causing it to stick up in directions previously thought inconceivable by Remus. 

“Maybe it’s not my first one,” Remus pointed out, playing Devil’s advocate for the sake of it—why not? The other boy was clearly enjoying himself. 

“Not possible,” the boy said with a laugh, not taking the bait for even a moment. “You don’t seem like you fucking hate every note of every song….yet.”

“What, and you do?” Remus countered, surprised to find himself slipping into a more relaxed posture, biting at the apple he was clearly being offered and letting his curiosity run the show for a moment. 

“Oh, of course,” the boy said, his brow knitting in a way that was clearly meant to lend him an air of reliability. “In fact, everyone who works on the show hates the entire set list.”

“Not worried the big headliner will hear you talking shit about his livelihood?” Remus asked, and even he was surprised how quickly he’d slipped into the casual air of joking, feeling no qualms at all when it came to taking the piss out of this messy, grinning boy—was coworker the right word? He still wasn’t sure, especially since his own position here was of little-to-no permanence. 

“Of course not,” the boy said with a little shake of his head; it was clear he found the very thought hilarious. “He works on the show too, doesn’t he? He counts.” A fair answer, all things considered. 

“Ah,” Remus said dryly, turning to look back down at his camera and play around with the switches, making sure everything was all turned off and that his film wouldn’t suddenly spill out onto the floor or anything—it wouldn’t be the first time in his life. “In that case, if it’s really safe to speak freely, you should know that I’m definitely not a fan. I like stuff with a little more…substance.”

“Ah, now you’ve said the magic word,” said the black-haired boy. “Twice over, in fact. Speaking of ‘substance’—we’re about to go consume some illicit ones backstage, if you care to join. You sort of have to, actually. Bad luck to mess with tradition.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Remus sought to confirm, as if it would have made any difference at all in his answer—he was never one to rocket out of his way to socialize, but he could be talked into a few beers if the rest of the crowd were like this boy. 

“Whole crew,” the boy confirmed with a nod. “And if he’s not getting his ear talked off by his manager, Sirius, too.”

“Really?” Remus asked, and there was a look of genuine surprise on his face this time; it wasn’t like he spent a lot of time thinking about the in’s and out’s of Sirius Black’s life (in fact he spent approximately zero time thinking about it before this very night) but the polished-up leather jackets and line of hair care products didn’t exactly indicate someone who was the type to get ‘beers with the crew’ after they’d finished working their backsides off making his show happened. “I would have pegged him for more of the ‘curled up alone in his dressing room soaking in a bathtub of money’ type, if I had to pick one.”

“Oh, he’s going to love you,” said the black-haired boy, and he let out a loud, genuine laugh that left Remus feeling oddly good about himself; this newcomer seemed like someone who laughed loudly and often, and yet the fact that Remus had been the one to make him laugh left him proud to have done it. “Come on, before someone wanders out here and tries to rope you into cleanup duty.”

And just like that, he was off—Remus, with his long legs, still had to take off at double time to try and keep up. They were headed backstage (that much wasn’t surprising), but Remus, even with his press pass and the fact that he was being paid to be there, still felt like they were stepping into something off limits. 

“I’m, uh—Remus by the way,” Remus tossed in as they walked, not sure whether the boy would even really be interested. But not for the first time that night, he was proved wrong—the boy grinned at him and held a friendly hand out for a shake without breaking stride. 

“Sorry, my manners are always gone after a long night,” the boy said, shaking his hand enthusiastically a few times. “James. James Potter. Eternal roadie and captain of on-the-road pranks against the more stuck up crew members for the last…gods how long have we been on tour? Six months, but I did the last tour, too and the stint of god-awful smaller shows between the two. I’m not kidding when I say eternal roadie. They’re going to have to open the window of the tour bus and let my ashes spread themselves if I kick the bucket during a tour year.”

Remus laughed politely at the verbal resume and the two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence again as they came to a set of metal stairs—they were literally, by the looks of it, going underneath the stage to a cement-floored area that people were just starting to congregate towards. 

“Hey, so James—“ Remus said, trying the new name out for size and catching the black-haired boy’s attention. “What’s he like then? Really.”

“He’s a huge prick,” James said; there was zero hesitation. “Hugely pretentious, often cranky.”

“I thought you said—“ Remus started, but the end of his sentence was cut off by James before it could take any sort of form. 

“Let me finish, let me finish,” James said with an impatient wave of his hand. “Huge prick, pretentious crank. And, on top of all that, probably my very best friend in the world. You know. It evens out.”


End file.
